The Impact of Parent-Child Attachment on Self-Injury Behavior: Negative Emotion and Emotional Coping Style as Serial Mediators.

Yun Tao,Xiao-Yan Bi,Min Deng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01477

Abstract

In order to explore the relationship between parent–child attachment, negative emotion, emotional coping style, and self-injury behavior, 662 junior high school students in four junior middle schools in China’s Yunnan Province were investigated using a parent–child attachment questionnaire, adolescent negative emotion questionnaire, emotional coping style scale, and adolescent self-injury behavior scale. As a result, two mediate models were created to explain how parent–child attachment affects self-injury behavior. Negative emotion and emotional coping style play serial mediating roles in mother–child and father–child attachment models, respectively. The results show that negative emotion mediates between self-injury behavior and both father–child and mother–child attachment, while emotional coping style only functions between father–child attachment and self-injury behavior. By means of bootstrap analysis, negative emotion and emotional coping style have serial mediating roles concerning the impact of parent–child attachment on self-injury behavior. By comparison, the father–child and mother–child attachment have different mediating models: the former relies on emotional coping style, while the latter is associated with emotional experiences. This implies that parent–child attachment has different mechanisms in triggering self-injury behavior, which is in line with the hypothesis of attachment specificity.

Highlights

Non-suicidal self-injury is the direct, deliberate destruction of one’s own body tissue in the absence of suicidal intent, which is intended by the individual, rather than accidental (Klonsky and Olino, 2008; Nock and Favazza, 2009)
This study finds that father–child and mother–child attachment of junior high school students can both directly negatively influence self-injury behavior, which conforms to the basic view of interpersonal or systematic models (Crouch and Wright, 2004)
When there is a poor quality parent–child relationship, children are more likely to resort to self-injury (Glenn and Klonsky, 2010), which means that a healthy parent–child relationship is an essential factor to prevent junior high school students from self-injury behavior

Summary

Introduction

Non-suicidal self-injury (hereafter referred to as NSSI or self-injury) is the direct, deliberate destruction of one’s own body tissue in the absence of suicidal intent, which is intended by the individual, rather than accidental (Klonsky and Olino, 2008; Nock and Favazza, 2009). The parent–child relationship is unavoidably related to the formation and sustainable development of self-injury behavior in junior high school students. In the face of increasingly severe self-injury behavior, previous research has mainly investigated the effects of adverse family environments on adolescents’ self-injury behavior, such as early traumatic experiences, emotional susceptibility, personality characteristics, stressful life events, family conflicts, etc. A strong parent–child attachment with an emotional link in their relationship may to some extent prevent junior high school students from self-injury behavior. This paper mainly discusses the impact of parent–child attachment on one’s self-injury behavior as well as the mechanism behind it, in an attempt to offer targeted suggestions for the prevention and intervention of self-injury behavior in junior high school students

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Conclusion